


The Windhover

by takethewatch (fraternite)



Category: Westmark - Lloyd Alexander
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 12:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2812757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/pseuds/takethewatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six years after the revolution, Sparrow is still looking for her place in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Windhover

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nocowardsoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nocowardsoul/gifts).



She's not running away. She's too old to run away.

The captain of the _Windhover_ thinks she's running away; Sparrow can tell. It's in the set of her mouth, all business without a hint of softness there, in the suspicion in her eyes when she asks where Sparrow got the money.

"It's my earnings," Sparrow tells her. "I work in the pala--in the government." She inwardly curses the slip-up; it makes her look suspicious. The funny thing is, she isn't lying: It _is_ her earnings, her take from six years of solid work without bad habits or a taste for fancy food to eat away at it. But if she can't remember to call the former palace by its right name . . . it doesn't look very good.

"And what do you do in the government to make that kind of money?" the captain asks. She's a woman of business, Sparrow can tell. She wears trousers and a rough jacket, and her steel-gray hair is pulled back in a bun, all of it imminently practical. And she came recommended as a smart merchant who deals fairly and always takes just the right amount of risks. Sparrow's counting on that practical side to win out over the unusualness of a young woman traveling alone to a foreign country. Because she does have the cost of passage right here, in silver; passing it up wouldn't be good business.

"I'm a scribe," Sparrow tells her. "Scribing is good money, reliable. They always need scribes in government."

 

 _They always need scribes in government._ That was what Torrens had told Sparrow, six years ago. Back when they were shuffling everything around, sacking entire divisions of palace staff and hiring on staffs for entirely new divisions of government work. The monarchy was out; the republic was in. The country was being disassembled and rebuilt from scratch (Sparrow wasn't sure rebuilding a government really needed to involved that much _redecorating,_ but she held her tongue), and somehow in the midst of it, Torrens had made time to find places for two skinny little water rats.

Weasel had been easy enough; there was a printing shop going together for all the informative posters and pamphlets the new government would need to put out to explain to its citizens how it worked. As soon as he sniffed the printing ink, Weasel's eyes lit up, and he was nodding vigorously before Torrens even had a chance to ask if he would like to work there. Torrens had surrendered him into the hands of his new supervisor, and they left Weasel eagerly rattling about the presses, already just as much at home as he was working a crowd or building a barricade.

But Sparrow had shook her head stubbornly and refused the job, looking at her feet and ignoring Torrens's questions when he tried to figure out  _why_ . (How could she explain to him the way the very smell of ink made her heart clench? How she still reached for her notebook to write down little snippets of overheard street chatter? How his last breaths still rattled at the edges of her hearing?) She bit her lip and refused to meet the old doctor's eyes.

Torrens had just sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose and started suggesting other places where he could find her a situation. There were the kitchens, or maybe the stables, if she really wanted that. She could be a servant whose job was to greet people when they came to the government and tell them where to go, or a messenger to help the representatives communicate with each other and with their people back home. Or a scribe, in the records department of the new government.

Sparrow stopped him there. "The scribes," she muttered. "Do they write their own stuff? Or just make copies and such?"

"It's all copying," Torrens told her. "Copying, and a lot of mathematics. Reccord-keeping is three-quarters numbers, really."

Sparrow hesitated, then nodded. "Scribe," she agreed. No printing, no writting her own stuff. Just other people's words, and a lot of numbers. That was all right.

And just like that, Torrens had gotten her into the scribing room, where she'd spent the next six years bent over lists of property and percentages and bridge construction reports.

The work suits Sparrow just fine. The senior scribe supervisor, a skinny old man with a tremor in his hands that disappears like magic when he puts pen to paper, likes to remind the scribes that it might be boring work, but it is essential for their new government; for a republic--just like a monarchy--runs on the work of the people, but unlike a monarchy, it returns that work to them. In working for the Republic, he says, they are in a very real way working for the people themselves. The other scribes eat that stuff up--everyone in Marianstat is still feverish with Republican fervor--but it's never done much for Sparrow. She's content to have a roof over her head and something to eat, and that's as far as it goes.

She's never actually taken the time to be grateful for the position. She supposes she should have. After all, the entire country was in chaos, and what had she and Weasel done to earn its gratitude? Saved the life of the princess. Captured the king of Regia. What had that done but allowed the monarchy to limp along for a few more years? Westmark owed her and her brother nothing, but Torrens had taken care of their futures anyways. At the time, she was so tied up with grief for Keller that she was unable to feel anything else.

And now . . . now she knows she should feel grateful. And she resents the fact.

 

"Leave Marianstat? Are you crazy?" Weasel's voice, usually a pretty reliable baritone these days, cracks on the question. He stares at Sparrow, incredulous. "Why would I want to leave?"

The print shop is loud with clattering presses and people shouting back and forth (nothing they're working on here these days is urgent, but the printers and their devils like to pretend it is), but Sparrow lowers her voice anyway. "Don't you ever feel like . . . like a pet fox?"

Weasel wrinkles his nose. "You get stranger and stranger every year, I swear."

"No, but listen," Sparrow insists. "We don't belong here, not really. We're not palace people, we--"

"It's not a palace anymore," Weasel reminds her.

"It's still a palace," Sparrow says. "Even if they call it something else. Doesn't have to have a king to be a palace." Weasel opens his mouth to argue, but she talks over him. "We don't belong here," she says again. "They just put us here because they didn't know what to do with us, and they didn't think they could toss two kids back on the street. We're not needed."

"You're a junior scribe supervisor," Weasel objects.

She waves her hand dismissively. "Just because I've been there a long time. I've been hanging around so long they moved me up out of embarassment. Well, I'm tired of hanging around. I'm leaving, and you should come with me."

"I like it here," Weasel says stubbornly.

"But do you belong here? Can you really be happy doing as you're told and worshiping the Republic? Do you really want to stay in a place where you ended up just because they had to put you  _somewhere?"_

Weasel just shrugs. "You think too much, Sparrow."

 

She doesn't tell anyone where she's going, only that she's leaving. Everyone in her workroom is still starry-eyed for the Republic, and while Regia is trying to be on friendly terms with Westmark, it is still a _monarchy_. The other scribes would probably be shocked if they knew Sparrow was going to that benighted stronghold of oppression and injustice. It's just one more reason why Sparrow doesn't fit in there. 

She's never cared much about the Republic. It's nice that the people get to pick which fellow wears the crown (although now they've traded it for a kind of necklace of gold chain links), she supposes. But she suspects that down in the Fingers, it doesn't make much difference whether it's a crown or a chain, or who gets to wear it.

So it doesn't bother her that Regia still has a king. In fact, it's sort of the reason she's going.

It was her last resort for winning her passage on the  _Windhover,_ that standing invitation from the king of Regia to come visit him any time she liked, the trump card to pull out if the weight of solid silver didn't win the captain over. Sparrow's rather glad it didn't come to that. She was a little afraid that the claim might hurt her case more than help it, even though she does still have the battered letter Connie signed for her and Weasel when he said goodbye all those years ago; it's a strange enough story, the captain might have just laughed in her face. To tell the truth, Sparrow's not entirely sure she believes it either.

She's even less sure when sees him in the throne room, as the line of petitioners she's queued up in inches forward. When she first met Connie, he'd been a pale, gangly boy in a uniform that was too fancy and too big for him--and he had just been sick down the front of it. Over the few days she'd spent with him, they were living in a cave, sleeping on the dirt floor, and he'd had nightmares every time he shut his eyes that left him crying like a child. Even though he'd shaken off the terror and started to look a little less like a ghost as time went on and he helped wrap up the war between Westmark and Regia, he still was skinny, twitchy, and way out of his depth right up to the day he'd bid them goodbye. He was--though Sparrow, a child herself at the time, hadn't realized it then--a child, playing at being a king.

The man she sees on the throne is a king. For a moment, she's gripped with fear-- _Someone offed Connie and we never heard_ \--but then he smiles and she recognizes the grin, the glint of mirth in his dark brown eyes. It  _is_ Connie--Constantine, she won't be able to call him Connie again--but he's changed. He's filled out, grown a beard, lost the ridiculous war medals. He's grown up.

For a moment, Sparrow feels very small, and she's almost ready to melt back into the crowd and go away. But she reminds herself that time has passed for her as well, that she came here on her own with money that she earned with her own work. She reminds herself that she once held this man's head in her lap as he cried in fear. And that she's not afraid of no one.

She stays in line.

When it's her turn to speak to the king, he doesn't recognize her, and she is both frightened and proud. The advisor who she handed her letter to presents it to the king, and he takes his eyes off her to glance over it. Surprise washes over his face, quickly followed by delight, and he bursts out laughing.

"Sparrow!" he exclaims, jumping to his feet--and there, in that energy, in that restless motion, is the boy she knew. "How wonderful to see you! I hoped you'd come visit me some day!"

She grins. "Here I am."

"So you are!" And before she knows what's happening, Sparrow--water rat, miscellaneous displaced orphan of the revolution, junior scribe supervisor--is being hugged by a man who holds thousands of lives in his hands.

 

For being a king, Constantine doesn't really do much, Sparrow realizes. Used to the daily bustle of a government still piecing itself together, she is suprised by the calm automaticity of the Regian court. Constantine hears petitions every two weeks, and he meets weekly with his council to hear reports on how much he's gathered in taxes and whether he's executed any particularly bad criminals lately. But other than that, the kingdom basically runs itself, with ministers and chancellors and civil servants too far down to have titles carrying out the day-to-day business the same way it's been done for years and years. All this means Constantine has hours and hours of free time to entertain visiting diplomats from important world powers--and skinny junior scribe supervisors from small, less-important neighboring countries.

The day Sparrow arrives, she is invited to join the king for dinner. She goes down (following a servant through the maze of the palace hallways, wearing the fancy clothes and shoes that other servants brought for her, skin still stinging from the scrubbing still more servants lavished on her) at the appointed time, expecting a formal, awkward occasion in a stately dining room with maybe a dozen people. Instead, she's taken into a long, lamplit hallway with  _two_ long tables seating two score people. Constantine greets her warmly when she comes in (just moments before the bell signalling time to sit down), but she's seated so far down the second table that the only time she hears his voice again for the rest of the evening is when he's laughing so loud at something that the sound carries all the way down the room. She spends the evening making small talk with a duchess and an extravagantly moustached military fellow, unsure whether to be relieved (because what would she  _do_ if she'd been seated, obviously without justification, at the king's table?) or horrified (because she spends the whole evening sweating with nervousness about what she'll say if she's asked to explain her presence at the court).

Fortunately, as she gathers over the next two days as she joins king and his other companions for hunting, musical performances, and lawn games played with rings and stakes and a surprisingly vicious spirit of competition, the court is _full_ of people with no good reason to be there. There are dozens like her--old friends and distant relatives and people with vague political significance and people with letters mentioning old favors and people with no actual reason to be at court but who've managed it anyway. They're all there to cling to the coattails of royalty, to flock around in the king's presence and soak up whatever connections and sport and food they can until their welcome wears thin. Sparrow's not at all sure she likes being one of them.

Sometimes, tired of being part of that crowd, tired of dressing up in ridiculous frippery, tired of always having to  _talk_ to people, Sparrow pretends a headache and declines the invications to dine or to ride. In her tiny bedroom in the back of the palace (as large as a house and bedecked with paintings and lace curtains and vases that aren't even being used to hold anything), she fidgets with the grate in the emtpy fireplace and tries to think of something to do.

On the third day, bored out of her wits, she decides to do a bit of shopping, just to be doing something independent and  _normal._ There's a Regian snack, something the soldiers brought over to Westmark, that she and Weasel used to be very fond of (well, Weasel was fond of it, and Sparrow ate it because Weasel liked it). She hasn't seen it since she's come here, but of course, it's a commoner food; it would be strange to come across it in a palace. But right now Sparrow feels like eating some commoner's food, just to shake off the strangeness of everything. She gathers up her remaining money, puts on the most inconspicuous clothes she's been given, and leaves her room, feeling purposeful for the first time in days.

A butler stops her at the gate.

"It'd be best not to go down into the city alone, miss," he says. "It's . . . not a very nice place."

"Why not?"

The man looks profoundly awkward. "The people are very restless, this year," he says. "The harvest was not good, and there is a good deal of crime. Nasty stuff; you'd feel very out of place there."

Sparrow scoffs inwardly.  _If only he knew._ "I'll be fine. I just want to buy a few things."

"The staff will be happy to attend to your purchases, if there is anything you need."

"I can do it for myself."

"Miss, it really would be best if you stayed here," the butler insists, impassive.

"Fine." Suddenly tired of all of it, and not even caring anymore, Sparrow shoves her money into his hands. "Salted herring. However much that will buy."

She strides off as quickly as she can without looking like she's running, her cheeks burning with frustration and embarassment, her clenched fists hidden in the folds of her dress. (It turns out these full skirts are good for  _something_ .)

Later that night--very late indeed, after dinner in the long hall and a play and a musical performance in the second salon--Sparrow comes back to her room to find a dozen wooden crates stacked up in her bedroom. It would be mystifying--were it not for the strong smell of the herring.

She stares at the crates--twelve large boxes of salted fish, more fish than she could eat in weeks--and feels very silly. Of course. The fish are caught and salted here in Regia; they would cost a fraction of what Weasel paid for them in Westmark. And now she's spent all her money on them.

Then she remembers the blank nod the bulter gave on receiving her request, and collapses in laughter on the bed. Every time the giggles stop, something--the sight of the huge pile of crates, the misspelled labels of "salt hearrings," the linen towel spread  _so carefully_ underneath the stack--sends her back into half-hysterical laughter. What was she thinking?

What was she thinking, sending the butler out for fish without the faintest idea of how much she was buying? What was she thinking, throwing all her money into a silly, impulsive stunt like this? What was she thinking, coming to Regia in the first place?

Somewhere, it stops being funny.

 

What  _was_ she thinking, coming here? She wonders about it a lot over the next few days, through garden strolls and falconry and outings to the countryside. She wanted to get out of Westmark, yes, away from the memories, and the aimlessness of her life there, and the madeningly  _earnest_ Republicanism that everyone is wearing like a badge these days. But although her time in Regia is very different indeed from the life she knew in Westmark, it's no less aimless.

And it's not as far away from the memories as she'd hoped--although just how they hit her surprises her. (It's not in Constantine's ringing laughter. It's not in the uniforms--the style unchanged, these seven years--that stand at every corner and doorway in the palace. It's not even in the taste of the salted herring, a food she and Weasel first tried when she filched a Regian soldier's pack on their way out to find the war--and Keller.)

It's in an event so commonplace it must happen dozens of times every week in the city.

They're riding through one of the poorer sectors of the city, en route to a picnic in the clear mountain air. The men are on horseback; the women in the carriages (Sparrow doesn't like it, but there's nothing she can do about it without drawing a great deal of attention to herself--and Sparrow hates attention). As they make their halting way through the city toward the west gate, there's a commotion outside the carriage, some blustering shouting and a few impressive shrieks. Sparrow's carriagemates seem oblivious to it, but Sparrow leans forward and draws aside the curtain to see what's going on.

Three of the soldiers are trying--and having quite a time of it--to get two ragged children off the street. The oldest one is fighting smart, biting and kicking and scratching at all her soldier's tenderest places; she's clearly wriggled her way out of the grip of people much bigger than her before. The littler one has no idea what she's doing, doesn't even appear to be consciously  _trying_ to do anything, but the sheer force of her hysterical fury is taking up all the attention of two of the guards. What isn't clear is  _why_ the kids are trying to get near the carriages; if they know anything about anything, they know they weren't likely to get money in the first place and certainly not now. The thing to do is scamper before they manage to get themselves noticed in a bad way.

Then Sparrow leans a little farther forward, and she sees the dog.

It's a skinny, ugly little thing, and it's obviously used to life on the streets, to being kicked as soon as it's noticed--because even with its back legs crushed into jelly, it's still trying to drag itself away, toward the edges of the scene. Sparrow can't hear the noises it's making as it does so over all the other commotion, but she can see the glaze of pain in its eyes, the way its body twitches with every movement. It's obvious what happened: The children were running too close to the carriage in hopes of getting a coin from the rich ladies, and their dog went down under a wheel. It could have been the wheel under Sparrow's very seat.

Almost before she takes in the situation, it's over. A few more guards come around the corner and they quickly bundle the children away; the pathetic struggles of the dog are lost in the crowd of marketgoers; the carriages rumble on.

"Darling, do close the curtain," one of the ladies says to Sparrow. "The dust is really quite awful in this part of the city."

Sparrow lets the curtain fall; there's nothing more to see anyway. But she doesn't want to let it go. "There was a little dog," she explains, though nobody asked what the disturbance was. "Its legs were crushed by one of the carriages."

"This quarter of the city is just swarming with those dogs," another lady contributes. "Nobody owns them, and they just keep breeding in all the back alleys. Practically feral."

"I think this one was a pet," Sparrow says. "There were two little girls trying to get to it."

Nobody seems to hear. "Always so filthy!"

"I'm sure they carry all kinds of diseases. They're probably why the sickness was so bad last year."

"Why doesn't someone do something about them?"

Sparrow herself was once a little girl running too close to huge, creaking carriage wheels. She once saw a boy even smaller than herself trip and have his arm broken. The carriage--it had belonged to some wealthy nobleman from the eastern plains, as faceless to Sparrow as she herself was to him--had rolled on without even pausing. 

Nobody had thought anything of it, at the time; it was just the way things were. The poor starved and fell sick and got their arms crushed by carriages and the rich were inconvenienced by all the fuss. From the king all the way down to the newly-minted baron, the paint still wet on his coat of arms, all the nobles acted like the whole purpose of the poor was to provide for the comfort of the rich, and anything else they did was inexcusable insolence. And here in Regia--in the  _kingdom_ of Regia--it's just the same as it was once in Westmark.

Sparrow's not a starry-eyed fool. There are still water rats and pickpockets and little kids begging with real and fake sores on the streets of Marianstat. And the rich still pass them by without a second look.

But at least the government doesn't smile down on the whole thing. Westmark is trying to do something different. They're trying to build a system that says that every person's voice counts, from the man who owns so much farmland he hasn't even seen it all, to the man who tends the potatoes that grow on that land--to the little girl crying over her dying dog.

Sparrow laughs out loud (two of the ladies pause in their discussion of the plans to expand the royal library to look at her strangely). It turns out she's more of a Republican than she'd realized.

And she's going to have to run away again. She's just not sure where to, this time.

 

Down on the docks, she finds the _Windhover_ again, being loaded up for its return voyage. A week in the Regian port has turned the bolts of fabric and sacks of wheat and casks of wine into timber and gems.

"I want passage back," Sparrow says, head held high.

"Fine, we've the extra room still," the captain says. "More folks are wantin' to leave Regia than come to it, but you were such a nice quiet passenger that I'll give you the room for the same rate as before."

"There's a problem," Sparrow says, and she's a little bit gratified to see the way the captain's eyes flick immediately to her hands, searching for a blade. It's been a long time since someone considered her someone to be wary of. "I don't have coin. I . . . changed all my money into salted fish."

The captain laughs--not unkindly, but not kindly, either. "How?"

"It was an accident. I . . . misestimated how much I was buying." Sparrow can see that the captain is getting ready to dismiss her, so she presses on firmly. "I have twelve crates of salted herring. If you bring me back to Marianstat, two of them are yours. They'll go for three times as much as they do here, and you'll make the cost of my passage, plus a little extra for your risk."

"There's no market for herring in Marianstat," the captain says flatly, "It's a Regian food; they don't eat it down there."

"They do." The captain raises her eyebrows, and Sparrow continues. "My brother works in the government's print shop, and all the lads there are wild for the stuff. One of them's a Regian, and he brings it back with him every year when he goes up to visit his ma. They buy it off of him for three shillings a bit. Now, doubtless they won't pay as much when there's twelve crates of it to be had, but I guarantee you it'll sell, for a good bit more than it goes for here. There's twenty fellows in the print shop, plus another two score in the carriage house that they've gotten stuck on it as well."

The captain's lip twitches. "Five crates. For my risk."

Sparrow hesitates just a fraction of a second, then dares it. "Three. Three, and I don't mention the opportunity to any other merchants for another season yet."

This time, the captain's laugh is amused and friendly. "Fine; I'll take you for three and your silence. You've got a good head for the business, girl."

Sparrow tries to conceal her relief. "I suppose I have."

"I suppose I should be glad all your assets are in the form of fish; otherwise, I might have quite a rival on my hands in a few years." The captain winks at her.

"Don't be too hasty--I still have nine crates left." Sparrow can't keep the smile from her lips. "There's a lot I can do with that."

 

 

 


End file.
